


Link by Link and Yard by Yard

by scribbledmargins



Category: Boy Meets World
Genre: Alternate Universe - A Christmas Carol Fusion, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Look At Your Life Look At Your Choices, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-19
Updated: 2020-12-19
Packaged: 2021-03-10 19:35:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,226
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28162515
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scribbledmargins/pseuds/scribbledmargins
Summary: The year is 2008. Jack Hunter has made his bed and believes that he will just have to lie in it. That is until the ghosts show up in his dreams.
Relationships: Jack Hunter/Eric Matthews (Boy Meets World)
Comments: 14
Kudos: 58
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	Link by Link and Yard by Yard

**Author's Note:**

  * For [aqualined (inabstract)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/inabstract/gifts).



> Happy Yuletide! 
> 
> Notes on the timeline: This follows the general post BMW timeline that GMW suggests, with a few alterations. Namely Shawn sticks around and Jack and Eric have seen each other more recently. Some dialogue during the 'ghost of christmas future' scene is lifted from GMW.

It’s cold in New York. It’s cold every year and it was cold in Pennsylvania too, but this year Jack is feeling the cold in particular, as he makes walks from the subway up to his apartment building. He thinks about calling Eric, just to say hi, but then he doesn’t. It’s been getting harder to talk on the phone these days, the lines all tied up with the weight of things unspoken, and besides Jack is tired. He had a long day. 

He goes to the fridge for a beer and his leftovers from last night and his eyes get stuck on the Christmas card, the same way they have been every night this week.It’s nestled in with the postcards Rachel still sends sometimes, and the prints that Shawn likes to send him when he’s out on assignment and the photobooth strip of him and Eric at Coney Island two years ago.

It's a family portrait, Riley standing on the table in their new kitchen gap-toothed grin on megawatt display while Cory and Topanga stand behind her. Topanga is resting her hand where her belly is just starting to swell. The way she and Cory are both smiling open and warm, and looking just past the camera leaves Jack with no questions about who took the picture. He aches at the sight of the three of them so happy and settled; a family like he had always assumed he would have by now. 

On the back in neat handwriting is an invitation to their Christmas party tomorrow afternoon. Jack already knows he’s going to stay home, just like he did for their housewarming back in August, and then again for Halloween. It's just. He can’t. Not now, not while Cory is starting to shape young minds and Topanga is fighting the good fight every day in a courtroom. He can’t show up alone again. feeling bitter about it and guilty about feeling bitter. Even more than that he can't look them in the eye and tell them that he’s started contracting with companies that actively work against the things that Eric is making his life's work. It is so much easier to justify his choices to himself when he doesn’t have to try and justify them to people who saw him off when he was full of idealism and dreams for how to shape the future into something better.

Easier to just start distancing himself now, rather than watch them be disappointed. 

He flips the lights on his tiny pre-decorated tree and settles in on the couch for a cable Christmas movie marathon. It's still Christmas after all. His eyes slip closed just as Jacob Marley starts rattling his chains. 

When he opens them again, Rachel is watching him his ottoman. 

“Holy shit, what are you doing here? How did you get in?” 

“Oh I’m not here, Jack. You’re dreaming. Well actually you're having a sort of intervention of the fates vision. Anyway, I’m your guide.” 

“You’re...what?”

She rolls her eyes, but it’s fond and he can’t help the reflexive affection welling in his gut. They'd made a terrible couple by the end, but they'd made good friends. 

“Your guide, dummy. You’re due some self reflection. Think of me like...your ghost of Christmas past.” 

“Ghost? But you’re not--”

“What? Dead? No, of course not. I'm not even Rachel, not really. I’m just sort of trying her on for this part.” 

“Uh. Sure. Okay.” 

It’s just a dream. Jack is not going to entertain any other possibilities. A tiny traitorous voice in the back of his head starts muttering about Eric and his future sneezes but Jack locks it down. 

Not-Rachel grabs his arm and pulls him forward and then they are falling through nothing for a long disorienting moment before landing hard. 

Right in the middle of their old apartment.

“This is our old apartment.”

“Nothing gets past you.”

He and Eric are asleep on the couch, curled into each other, and Jack remembers a dozen nights just like this one. Then the scene changes and changes again. A sped up highlight reel of their time together in this apartment, all the big and small moments that had shaped his life and changed him into a better man. Or at least that’s what he had thought at the time. 

“Why are we here?”

“To remind you, I guess. That you were happy here. That your life was better once it had Eric and Shawn and everyone else in it. That he left a mark on you and that most of the time it was in good ways. And a little bit to make sure you remember how you felt about him, even then. ” 

“Rachel.” 

“Not Rachel.” 

“Okay, whatever, but you need to know that I loved her. I loved her so much, I wanted her so much, I was so happy to be with her, it wasn't like. Like a back up or a, a denial thing, Rachel I swear--”

“I know. But you loved him too. And there were a lot of reasons neither one of you took that chance back then, but still. You didn't take it.” 

In front of them Eric and Jack are standing in the kitchen, their elbows knocking against each other more than strictly necessary. They both look achingly young. He's thought about it a lot. About what it would have been like if he'd ever been able to look directly at his feelings years ago and do something about it. Looking at them now, he feels certain it wouldn't have worked even if Rachel had never walked in and knocked them both on their asses. 

"So is this it? You remind me that I'm loved and I did love and whatever and I go back and try to mend fences before it's too late or something?

“Well," She says, shrugging, "Kind of but. We aren't in the practice of intervening for love alone. You’re at more than one fork in your road Jack Hunter.”

He blinks and then they’re somewhere else, some when else.

Jack of the past is sitting in an internet cafe down the block from where he and Rachel were staying at the time, staring intently at the computer in front of him, a mug of forgotten coffee getting cold off to the side. He knows what’s coming. 

He and Rachel had started fighting pretty soon after they shipped out. The dreamy romanticism of traveling the world doing good had been quickly replaced by reality. They had little money, they were tired, they were thousands of miles from home. He had started thinking about the road not taken where he went to New York instead, how he could’ve been working his way up somewhere and seeing his best friend and his brother everyday instead of relying on phone cards and letters. At nearly a year in he was miserable and exhausted and the year stretching before him seemed impossibly long. Then he had gotten an email from his stepdad about a company that was hiring and did he want him to pull some strings and get Jack an interview and out of his service contract early? 

He had allowed the panic to take over, the desperate voice in his head saying that this wasn’t what he thought it would be, that he and Rachel weren’t what he’d thought they’d be when they finally got to be on their own, that the only way to lead a successful life to was to start making as much money as possible as soon as possible and every moment he spent doing something noble was a moment he was falling behind his peers and losing time he would never make up. 

He hadn’t even asked about the company. He had just said yes and allowed money and connections to do what they did best.

“Do you regret it?” 

He can’t quite look at her, even if it’s not really her, not here in the room where he put the final nail in their coffin without een talking to her about it first. 

“Am I supposed to? Is that the point of this?” 

“The point is to show you the choices you’ve made that led you to being drunk and maudlin and alone at Christmas. You don’t have to regret them, you just have to see them.”

Jack thinks about it.

“I regret not thinking about what I was saying yes to a little more carefully. I regret going back on a commitment halfway through . I regret that our relationship ended like that.” 

“You still talk to her.”

“We don’t talk. She sends me postcards when she travels and we email on birthdays that’s not...I wish I could have done it in a way that made it possible to stay friends. I miss her but…”

“But you don’t miss being in love with her?”

“Yeah." 

He shakes off the contemplation. "Really, really can’t say enough how weird it is to have conversations about ex while you’re wearing her face by the way.” 

She rolls her eyes. “Let’s go.” 

"We aren't going to watch the fight that happens after this?"

"Nah. You seem to remember it just fine without any help."

They take a step forward out of the cafe and onto a busy street in New York City.

It’s another fast forward highlight reel. He watches and lets the memories wash over him. It feels like yesterday and a hudnred yeas ago all at once.

The first couple weeks he’d crashed on the couch in the shitty two bedroom that Cory and Topanga and Shawn and Eric were splitting four ways, but it had already been too crowded so he’d found a room for rent in a slightly less shitty apartment a block over. After that Eric had been a semi-permanent fixture, practically living on top of Jack again, getting his hands all over Jack’s life in a way that had felt right. In a way that he had missed. 

Then the baby had come and Eric had come to him and suggested that they get a place together. 

His breath catches at the scenes in that apartment. Coming home to Eric every night, playing video games and watching tv, and weekend pancakes, and Riley's pack and play folded up in the corner and her toys scattered around. 

They had built a life together here, but they still hadn't talked about it, the feelings that were always just under the surface. They had been together in all but name and deed. Each other's emergency contacts and plus ones. Uncle Eric and Uncle Jack. Part of him, he can admit now with some distance had always been waiting for Eric to pull them over the line, to be brave and reckless for them both. But he can see how Eric was looking at him now, and he can see all the opportunities he had let slide right through his hands. 

His job is in the mix too. Two years of telling himself that if he just climbs the ladder a few more rungs he can make positive changes in the company, and then another two of telling himself he'll quit after the next check he juts needs to save a little more money, have a little more on his resume and besides someone in this family needs to be making some decent money. 

But he hadn't quit. He'd just kept climbing. Just like he'd never said anything to Eric, too content with the life they had and too afraid of losing it by trying for something more. 

The scene slows down, solidifies into one of him and Eric on a bench at the playground a few blocks over from their apartment. Riley is with them, they'd been keeping her a lot that year with Topanga still in law school and Corey trying to work during the day and getting his teaching degree at night, and Shawn starting to get bigger assignments taking him away for longer. The three of them at this playground was a common occurrence but still. He knows what day he's watching. 

“I don’t want to see this.” 

“I know you don’t.” 

He pinches himself, tries to wake himself up but it doesn’t work. 

On the bench, Eric isn’t looking at him while he says, “So I got a job offer.” 

Jack can’t wake up so he has to stand there helpless and watch Eric explain all over again that he was moving upstate to work at a nonprofit in a tiny town with a ridiculous name. He has to watch himself offer congratulations and smiles and then, then he has to watch Eric smile and say almost like a joke, like the answer doesn't really matter,

"You want to come with me?"

He had wanted to say yes, he remembers how badly he wanted to say yes. But he had known what it would mean if they moved somewhere else together when they didn't have a good financial excuse. He had known what it would mean and he had felt that old familiar panic welling up in him, telling him that this would change things, that he would rearrange his life again and it wouldn't work out and he'd be back at square one but minus his best friend. And as much as he doesn’t want to admit it even to himself, even in a dream, it really had seemed important at the time to keep working his way up the ladder, keep hitting the milestones that would indicate that he was doing life in the right order and on time instead of walking away with no back up plan.

When he was a kid Jack's mother used to tell him when he couldn't make up his mind that he had to fish or cut bait. His past self sits on the bench pastes a smile on and cuts bait. 

"And give up all this clean city air? I appreciate the offer man but you know I can't just leave, not when I've got that promotion coming. Besides, it's probably time to stretch those wings and live on our own for a little while, huh?" 

Rachel, or the facet of his dreaming mind that was wearing her face, is watching him carefully.

“Are you okay?” 

“No.” He answers truthfully. 

He had thought, sitting on that bench, that he was doing the right thing for their friendship. That Eric moving would change things but Jack staying was how they didn't ruin it, was how he got to keep the most important relationship in his life.

And at first that head been true. While they were packing up and pulling apart the threads of their entangled lives everything had gone on as normal. But then once Eric was gone they had talked on the phone twice a week, and then once a week, and then less. It wasn’t anyone’s fault, it was just what happened when people grew up, at least that's what he told himself.

Except here he is nearly two years watching in a dream as a door he should've walked through slams shut. 

“I should have said yes when he asked. And now it’s too late.” 

“I don’t know. I think if it were really too late, I wouldn’t be here.” 

“I thought you didn't come just for lost love.” 

Rachel just smiles. 

Jack takes a deep breath and braces himself. Whatever she wants to show him now can't be any worse than this.

“Alright so what’s next?” 

Instead of another round of past Jack's greatest hits, he wakes up on his couch. 

  
  
  


It was just a dream, he tells himself while he brushes his teeth on autopilot and strips down to his boxers and gets into bed. It was just a really really vivid dream, even if it felt real, even if he saw things he hadn’t even known he’d remembered. It was just a really weird dream and someday if he and Rachel ever figure out how to be friends again he will tell her about the time he had a dream where she the ghost of Christmas past and they’ll laugh and laugh and maybe he’ll even tell Eric next time they talk but leave out the parts where he’s still in love with him and maybe always will be and--

“Mr. Hunter.”

Mr. Feeny is perched at the end of his bed. 

Jack screams. 

Mr. Feeny surveys him over his glasses, with a look thats so familiar Jack feels himself try to straighten up his spine purely out of habit. 

“I’m still dreaming. Either that you died and made a strange haunting choice. In which case, you know, Cory _is_ in the city and I’m sure he’d love to see you.” 

“I am not dead. Nor am I Mr. Feeny. I am simply assuming the shape of someone you know and trust in order to guide you on this part of your journey. Whoever you saw first was supposed to explain.”

Jack can feel himself deflate. 

“She did. I guess this makes you Christmas present right?”

“Indeed.” Says Mr. Not Feeny. 

And then the air around him is shimmering and shifting and they are somewhere else. 

Somewhere he recognizes, even if he hasn’t been there yet, surrounded by people he recognizes in the hustle and bustle of a party mid-swing. 

“Wait a minute. This isn’t present, this party isn’t happening until tomorrow night. This is Christmas one-day-in-the-future!” 

“Don't spilt hair Mr. Hunter. It’s not an exact science.” 

Feeny is much less talkative than Rachel, and less boisterous than every version of A Christmas Carol would have him believe. For a moment Jack pictures him chomping down on a giant chicken leg with relish, dripping grease all over the tweed and then he has to shake his head to get the image loose. When he tells Eric about this dream he’s definitely going to tell him that Feeny was in a robe and scarfing down turkeys whole. 

Speaking of Eric, he’s standing by the couch with Riley hanging on one arm, a blonde girl Jack doesn’t recognize hanging on the other, and Josh is clinging to his back. All three kids are squealing and Eric is making his Godzilla noises. Jack’s heart constricts in his chest. 

Topanga walks in laughing from the kitchen, showing way more than she was when they took their Christmas card photo, and for some reason that’s the thing that really does him in. The last time he saw her she wasn’t even pregnant yet. 

“God, I haven’t seen any of them in so long.”

“What’s been keeping you?” 

“I don’t know. Recently it’s been. Well because I’m a little embarrassed of my job. But before that...I don't know. I guess I was just kind of jealous.” 

Eric and his pile of kids cross so close in front of where he and Feeny are standing Jack could reach out and put his had right through Eric’s chest if he wanted. He takes a step back instead. 

“Eric!” 

Eric turns and so does Jack to the sound of his brothers voice, and Shawn and Cory are standing in the kitchen, behind the table that’s on the card on Jack’s fridge. 

“Yeah?”

“Shake off the monsters and come help us put the rest of the food out!” 

Jack watches Eric roar and pretend to shake them off but really set them down gently onto the ground. He watches Eric walk past him again, still close enough to touch. 

“Jealous, Mr. Hunter?” 

Jack looks back at Feeny. “Huh? Oh. Yeah, I mean. I guess I sort of just expected this to happen for me too. I did what I was supposed to do, I went to college, I got a good job, I pay into my 401k. This is next right? Marriage and kids?” 

“Perhaps. For some people. Is that what you really want?” 

“Yeah.” He watches Eric laughing with both their brothers, watches the shape of the family he already has here move around party guests and little kids, and feels something deep inside him unwind. “Yeah it’s something that I want. With the right person.” 

The shame he’s been feeling over all his resentment seems easier to confront here, in what might be a dream. 

“I think it’s been...hard to look at them and not feel like a failure.” 

“You are far from a failure Jack.”

And then it comes pouring out.

“Am I? I keep trying to live my life like I’m pitching a perfect game, no mistakes, but I quit the Peace Corp early, I let my stepdad convince me that I should take a job with a company I don’t even like, I never even tried to live up to my ideals, not when it counted. And here they all are, living these beautiful lives and they’ve made so many mistakes. Like, I don’t know, getting married at eighteen that wasn’t supposed to work! And then having a baby before they were done with undergrad? I feel terrible about it but I thought for sure that was it, they were going screw up the trajectory of the rest of their lives but no. Here they are in this beautiful home, two good jobs, a great kid and another on the way and I just. There’s an order you do things in, and they did it all out of order and I hate how jealous I am of them for how well it’s working out.” 

“You feel that you should be the one to reap success because you were the one who followed the quote unquote ‘rules.’”

Jack stares at his shoes. 

“Yes.” 

“And Shawn? What’s he done to earn your resentment?” 

“He’s doing something that makes him happy. And he didn’t listen when I told him that he should do something else.”

Shawn had stayed. Shawn had woven himself into the fabric of his friends lives and never bothered to rip himself free. Years ago Shawn had followed them here without a second thought. Shawn is building a life for himself that he’s proud of, from behind the lens of his camera.

“Jack. There’s nothing stopping you from coming back to the fold. These people love you. You know they love you.” 

It’s true, he knows that. He’s been pulling himself away from them for months rolling into years but he’s not stupid enough to think that they don’t still love him. But they don’t seem to need him around. No one is missing him at this party, and his bitter disappointment in himself and the choices he did and didn’t make don’t fit here in the warmth. 

“I think maybe I left it too long. Let too much time pass.” 

Feeny shakes his head. 

“Not that long, not in the grand scheme of things. You have plenty of time left to change your mind, go a different way. Or…” 

The party dissolves around him. 

  
  


Jack is in another apartment. It’s nicer than the one he has now, but he recognizes some of the knick-knacks and pictures as his own. He looks around but there’s no one with him, no version of himself, no ‘facet of his subconscious mind’ just him alone. 

Then he feels someone tug on the edge of his pajamas and looks down. 

It’s Riley, dressed like she was at the party he just left but more solemn than he’s ever seen her. 

“You? You’re my ghost of Christmas future?” 

She gazes at him with her huge eyes and nods. She still isn’t smiling. It’s unsettling to say the least. 

“Are you gonna talk or are we playing this more traditional?” 

She puts a finger to her lips. Jack sighs and holds out his hand. 

“Alright kid. Show me what we’re here for.” 

She grabs him around the wrist and then they’re standing in a cafe and Eric is there too. 

He’s older, but probably by less than ten years. 

And then an older version of himself is walking in the door and right up to Eric and Eric is turning around and they’re embracing and this is good right? They must still be friends in this version of the future, to greet each other like this, he must not have screwed up too badly by choosing to preserve their friendship over something else. But then he notices that the older Jack looks nervous. And then Eric is saying, 

“So we’re still friends? Because I haven’t seen you in a really long time.” 

And the air goes out of Jack’s lungs. 

He looks down at Riley standing silent beside him and even though he doesn’t expect an answer says, 

“We aren’t even friends anymore.” 

She looks pointedly past him back up at the scene unfolding in front of them. 

Future Jack is saying,

“There’s not a day that goes by that your voice still isn’t inside my head. No matter what I do.” 

God. Jack believes it. 

He watches them move around each other in a way that would seem comfortable to anyone else, anyone who didn't remember the easy way they used to dip in and out of each other's space without a thought. Eric is a senator in the future which is somehow easier to swallow than the stilted way they're speaking. 

“I’m waiting for some evil guy from some evil company who’s gonna try to sleaze his way into my pocket to buy my vote.” 

Eric is smiling but it's strained. 

It’s not him. It can’t be him. That can’t be the only reason he’s here. 

“Really? Why would they do that?”

He watches himself try and fake nonchalance and watches Eric see right through him.

It _is_ him. He’s the evil guy from the evil company. Jack’s head is spinning so much from the thought of still being at his job, still taking contracts with people who are causing so much harm, enough that the only way he can even see Eric anymore is as part of a scummy deal, that he almost misses what happens next. 

“...Hires really good looking employees with pocket squares and hair that goes swoosh to hide their company’s evil faces.” 

Future Jack caves immediately. 

“You’re still an idiot genius aren’t you?”

Eric stares out into the middle distance like he used to when he was acting like he could see the future--although. Was he? If Jack is really on a magical mystery tour through time and space for self reflection then maybe he _does_ need to reevaluate some things….But this time, at least, Eric isn’t saying anything he wouldn’t have already known. 

“Jack Hunter joined the Peace Corp with Rachel McGuire, she stayed you left, you joined an evil company and you haven’t been the same ever since.” 

Hearing it all summed up like that is a punch to the chest, but hearing himself try to justify it and give up halfway through, even though he’s clearly done nothing until now to make different choices? That’s so much worse. 

“You know you get a little older, grow up, face another choice. BUt you make the wrong decision. Why does that happen?” 

“I don’t know Jack. I wasn’t there.” 

Eric is mad and Jack is mad right along with him. Of course this was always going to be the consequence of his poor choices. Of course there was no other path.

 _You should have been there_ Jack wants to scream. _You should have been there, I need you to be there. I want you to be there._

“And now I’m in a position to influence the whole world.” 

“What do you know. Me too.” 

Jack can’t look at Eric anymore. It was good when Eric was mad, Jack deserved that, but he can’t take the way Eric is looking at Older Jack now, soft and open and exactly the same as he's been looking at him since they were kids.

“Jesus, why is he being so nice to me, he shouldn't be nice to me, I don't--” 

Riley, of course, says nothing. 

“I guess the only choice left is, who influences who?”

“Tell him you messed up. Jack tell him you messed up, tell him you’re sorry.” 

The other Jack can’t hear him of course. And before he can see what else is going to happen Riley’s tiny ghost hand is closing in his wrist again and they’re moving somewhere else. 

They’re in a gym now decorated for a dance.

The Jack and Eric from before are standing by a table with an older Cory and there are teenagers everywhere. He thinks for a moment that maybe his life hadn’t fallen apart quite as spectacularly as it had seemed, maybe he is still close with the others just not with Eric. 

Until a girl that’s clearly a teenaged version of Riley comes up to them and starts asking questions and he realizes that this older Riley doesn’t know him. 

“Wait no that’s not right.” He turns to the six year old next to him. “Riley you know me. I'm Uncle Jack, you’ve known me since you were born, you used to stay with us all the time!”

She just stares at him and slowly shakes her head. 

“You know me. But _she_ doesn’t know me.”

It makes sense. Of course Riley wouldn't know him, not if he just stopped seeing her when she was barely more than a toddler. It's a predictable outcome for all it feels unthinkable to him in the moment.

“If I...If I keep making the choices I’m making right now, keeping alienating myself from all of you...This is what happens. I’m just a stranger in your life. Just someone they all used to know.” 

Feeny was right. It’s not too late now, but laid out in front of him is a future where it will be. He’s been playing chicken with this version of his life and all he has to do is swerve. 

“I’ll change. I want to change. Let me wake up, I’ll go to that party tomorrow, I’ll tell Eric I want to change, you won’t forget me, please. Please I can change.” 

Riley smiles at him for the first time since she’d materialized and squeezes his hand. 

He wakes up on the floor next to his bed. 

  
  
  
  
  
  


He types up his letter of resignation before he even gets dressed in the morning. But his finger hovers over the print button. His stepfather’s voice in his head says _you are making a huge mistake_ says _at least wait and see what else is out there_ says _you won’t really stay another ten years just by waiting to have your ducks lined up first_ says _it was just a dream._

Eric’s voice from the future where they weren’t even friends anymore says _I guess the only choice is who influences who._

It’s Saturday anyway. He can’t quit until Monday. He can still change his mind if by tomorrow he’s realized this _was_ just a dream and it’s not a now or never scenario. 

The party though. He’s going to that. He waffles over what to wear for fifteen minutes before opting for a dark green sweater and his nicest jeans. 

His palms sweat on the subway, and he tries not to think about how close he’s been living to Cory and Topanga and sometimes Shawn, without ever bothering to drop by and say hello and welcome to the neighborhood.

He’s early. Two years ago he would have just shown up with Eric. A year ago he would have barged right in certain of his welcome. But not now. He's been invited but he's been avoiding them all too long to show up early. He ducks into a cafe instead.

It’s the same cafe from his ghost of Christmas future. A little shabbier maybe, not as sleek. But the same cafe. All the hair on the back of his neck stands up. By the time three o’clock rolls around Jack has talked himself in and out of a deja vu theory four times and in and out of submitting that letter of resignation five. 

It would be crazy, he thinks as he heads up the street scanning for the address from the back of the Christmas card, to quit a really good job over a dream. Even if he hates it. Even if it’s making him do things that would have made his younger self furious. He can save his friendships and still withdraw from his job gracefully and with a back up plan. He’s going to be fine. 

By the time he’s made it up the elevator and to the door though, he’s not thinking much of anything, except _don’t be mad don’t be mad don’t be mad_. 

He can hear Cory musing about who even knocks during a party anyway and then door is swinging open and Cory is standing there. 

A huge smile spreads across his face. 

“Jack! Hey man, get in here! Hey, Shawn, look who’s here!” 

“Jack! Holy cow man, we didn’t think you were coming!” 

It looks exactly like it did in his dream. He feels shaky. 

"Yeah I, uh, I didn't know if I could make it but here I am!" 

Topanga crosses the room and pulls him into a hug.

"Well we are so glad you did! Make yourself at home."

He blinks rapidly and tries not to cry. It's not too late. It's _not._

"Yeah, yeah I will, thanks Topanga."

"Uncle Jack!" 

Riley pelts into him, dragging her little blonde friend by the hand. 

"Maya this is my Uncle Jack!"

"Hi Uncle Jack!" 

And then they're off again.

He will have time, time to settle back into this family like he never tried to leave, but for now there's only one person he really wants to see. 

Eric comes out from the hallway, arms full of presents and stops dead when he catches sight of Jack.

"Buddy! You're here!"  
  


"I'm here. Listen, Eric I need to talk to you."

"Yeah of course, of course hang on, let me just--" He deposits the armful of gifts under the tree.

"Okay lets go over here."

Eric steers Jack into the kitchen. There's no food out on the table yet so no one else is nearby. Jack feels like he's going to burst. It will be worth it, taking a risk like this, even if he's too late. He swallows his nerves.

“Eric.”

“Yeah? Are you alright Jack, you seem a little...sweaty."

“I'm not. I'm really really not. I'm sorry I didn't go with you when you asked me. I should have, I wanted to. And, and, I hate my job. I hate it Eric and I shouldn’t have stayed as long as I did, but especially not now, we're working for bad people and I'm ashamed of myself to work there but. God, Eric. I’m afraid if you don’t talk me out of it right now I think I’m going to stay there for another ten years and keep avoiding all of you _because_ I’m ashamed and lonely and then we aren’t even really going to be friends anymore, and I told you I didn't want to move with you because I was afraid that if we tried to be something it would ruin our friendship and I couldn't take that but I think I ruined it anyway or else I'm going to if I don't change, and Riley isn’t even going to remember me and I'm only going to see you when I try to buy your vote and that would really _really_ suck so please, Eric, talk me me out of it.” 

Eric looks gobsmacked. 

“What, uh, what brought about this very sudden change of heart? I mean _I_ knew you were miserable at that job, and that you didn't come with me because you were scared but I didn’t think _you_ knew. I didn't think you knew when we talked last _week."_

Jack tries not to get his hopes up. 

“Would you believe that I was visited by the Ghosts of Christmas past present and future?”

Eric doesn't even blink.

“Yes. I would.”

God, Jack loves him. 

“Eric.” He says again.

And then, heart beating in his throat, he reaches out and presses the back of his hand to the back of Eric’s free one. Eric glances down and swallows, then looks Jack right in the eye. 

“I think you should quit your stupid evil job. And I think you should come home with me.”

"You want me there?"

Jack’s voice isn’t shaking. It’s not. 

"Of course I do. I always wanted you there. Living alone is highly overrated and so is playing phone tag and I don't think we should do it anymore. I think we should just be in the same place." 

"I don't have a plan. I don't know what I'm doing next."

"Other than quitting your evil job and coming home with me?"

Jack feels his smile splitting his face and presses against Eric's hand even harder. They probably look ridiculous. Jack doesn't care. Eric sounds sure of himself, so sure that what he's suggesting is the right move. 

"Yeah. Other than that."

Eric flips his hand over and threads his fingers through Jack’s and squeezes. Smiles and says,

“That's okay. We'll figure it out."


End file.
